


Dying, and Behold, We Live

by spinsters_grave



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (technically a new mexico au but i digress), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Texas, Gen, Keith doesn't end up with voltron, Minor Keith/OC, POV Keith (Voltron), gratuitous references to music, or at the garrison for that matter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-07 22:14:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15229047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinsters_grave/pseuds/spinsters_grave
Summary: For some reason, Keith loves looking at the stars, and he has the feeling they like watching him too, alone in the desert with only ghosts to his name. If Keith was anything, then he wasn’t a very important anything, but at least the stars looked at him.





	Dying, and Behold, We Live

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

##  **Tomb of the Unknown Soldier**

 

 

  
  


****

  
  
  
  


 

  
  


_ “As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live…” _

_ 2 Corinthians 6:9 _

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

_ “Havana, oh na na… half of my heart is in Havana, oh na na… ” _

 

“Hey, you… turn that shit  _ off,”  _ a man on the other end of the bar yelled, drunk as fuck. Keith watched over his shoulder as the man sloshed his beer can around. Only a couple drops made it to the floor. 

 

Behind the counter, Tico rubbed the dirt of a glass pint, simply staring at the man. He glanced over at Keith and subtly jerked his head—most people would miss the gesture, if they didn't know what to look for. Keith knew what to look for. 

 

He hated moving his body after putting a few drinks in it. Always felt like he was coming out of a cold. His neck was tight—as he made his way towards the rowdy table, he rolled his head around, satisfied at the crack and small relief. 

 

Keith rubbed a hand over his face, tight and warm like everything else in this town. Like the liquor, the women, the weather. His features rearranged into something pretending to be cool and intimidating, but he was really just tired. So, so tired. 

 

It was only a couple army rookies and what must have been their commanding officer at the table. The poor kids looked scared to death—neither of them looked older than Keith, and untested by the universe besides, but they weren’t young, neither. Their old man was the one to watch out for. Keith didn’t doubt that when the going got tough, the tough would get going. By which he meant new recruits. 

 

Keith laid his hand on the table between the drink and the old man’s outstretched hand. “I believe you have had enough.”

 

Silence fell over the poor excuse of a drinking hole, except that Tico coughed. When Keith glanced over, he mouthed  _ Sir. _

 

“Sir,” Keith added. The music went on in the background, all siren moans and lonely trumpet. Keith liked it better than the country mariachi that normally played on the radio out here. Tico had fixed it up last night so it could pick up popular FM. 

 

“I believe I have  _ not _ had enough,” the old man growled, bringing his entire body up from his chair. It could have been impressive, except he slurred his words, and Keith made it a habit to not get impressed often. 

 

Quick as desperation, Keith picked the man’s beer can from the multitudes of crumpled aluminum strewn on the table. It was a Budweiser. Keith let out a crazed little laugh. 

 

“All the best liquor money can buy, and you insult us with this trash?” he sneered, waving the beer can in the man’s face. “You come into this establishment, bring your sad little beer and your sad little friends—”

 

“And his sad little dick,” some joker in the back stage-whispered, causing some laughter to erupt around the bar.

 

“That too,” Keith said. “You bring your sad little life in our bar, and you dare disrespect us and our radio with your…” He ran his eyes over the man’s faded serape and gaudy belt buckle and snakeskin boots. They looked authentic on him, which was offensive in its own right. “Your everything?”

 

The man let loose a wordless growl, the preamble to a flipped table. Keith winced at the crash of hard wood on hard wood. He should have known better than to stick around for the first punch. 

 

Before the brawl really took off, Tico sighed and said, “Dammit, Jack.”

 

* * *

 

After the fight was done, Keith sat outside. He considered fumbling around for his pack of Lucky’s, but his lungs and ribcage probably wouldn’t have been able to take it. 

 

Most of the bar’s occupants lay out in the street, the slowly setting dust landing on their dried blood. Speaking of—Keith scratched at his forehead, dispersing a few red flakes. Some congealed blood was under the small amount of fingernail he had sticking out of each nail bed. 

 

The door behind Keith opened. He sighed and rested his wrists on his bent-up knees. Lazily, he flicked out the blood out from underneath his fingernails, one by one. 

 

Tico extended a bottle of rum to show a peace offering. The liquid inside—a little less than half the original—sloshed around, throwing golden shadows in the rapidly dimming daylight. Keith took the bottle and pressed its fading coolness to his eye. Not as good as an ice pack, or a good steak, but it’ll have to do. 

 

“I’ve always liked it here,” Tico said softly, like he was saying the last rites over the probably dead bodies. Wasn’t it true people didn’t stay unconscious for long, or they’d get brain damage and die? Keith had read that somewhere on the internet to prove that gallant heroes like James Bond and Bruce Lee were actually assholes. “It’s quiet, and time moves slow as molasses.”

“Yeah,” Keith grunted. He could see what Tico meant. The world was softer here, brimming with untold stories and unlimited sky. Unlimited days. 

 

Tico tsked and made to sit down next to Keith. He was on the side of Keith’s busted eye, or Keith would have turned to look at him instead of the side of the sky opposite the sunset. 

 

“You’re no fun, Jack,” Tico said. “That was the most alive I’ve seen you in a while back there. You  _ roasted  _ the poor man!”

 

“That one of your internet words?” Keith asked, easily responding to the fake name. “Roasted?”

 

“Means to… drag someone. Razz them. Insult someone in front of a crowd.” Tico produced a pack of cigarettes. Weren’t Keith’s brand. “Want one?”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

Once he had a cigarette between his teeth, Tico chuckled and shook his head. “More for me. Refusing a free cig? You’re an odd one, Jack Warren.”

 

Keith found he had no reply to that. They sat out on their porch, the likely dead sprawled in front of them like some painting by some guy who painted vivid scenes of hell. That guy’s name was a mouthful. Keith wondered if he ever got bullied as a kid since his name was so long. Bosch, that was the last name. Could have gone by that. 

 

They watched the sky opposite the sunset. What scant clouds they had out in this desert were painted pastel pink, like the fingernails of the lady down at the CVS. It was kinda pretty against the cobalt blue sky. At least Keith  _ thought _ it was cobalt. Wasn’t that when blue was real dark and speckled with space static and a little yellow at the edges? 

 

“Penny for your thoughts,” Tico said, stubbing out his cigarette to light up another. 

 

Keith’s gaze flickered to the man, then back up to the sky. “The sky as it is is cobalt, right?”

 

Tico rested his wrists on his knees, same as Keith, and peered up. “Sure is.” He said it with the exact amount of certainty that Keith was certain he didn’t know, either. 

 

“What about you? I don’t got a penny, but….”

 

Tico sighed. “Let me have a little bit of that rum, Jack. Family’s a hard subject.”

 

Somewhere in the sunset, Keith had let the bottle drop from his eye. He passed it over. “Y’all are, uh… Mexican, right?”

 

Tico didn’t do a spit-take, but it was a near enough thing. He gulped down his rum and grimaced. “No.  _ God, _ no. Not every Hispanic person you’ll see out here is Mexican.” He grinned proudly. “I’m a twin.”

 

“Didn’t know that was a country.”

 

Tico let out a beleaguered sigh. When he saw Keith’s poorly hidden smile, he hid one of his own, but punched Keith in the arm. “Shut up. My family and I, we’re Cuban. Little island, out in the Caribbean… I hear it’s beautiful.”

 

“I heard of Cuba, thanks. So you speak Spanish?”

 

“No. I wish.”

 

“Yo no hablo español tambien.”

 

Tico flushed. “Shut up, Jack. God, you sound like my dad.”

 

“I don’t speak Spanish, neither. Just picked a word or two from an old set of parents I used to have.” Keith stole the bottle and took a swig. He had always liked rum the best, and had a sneaking suspicion he’d like mead too if he could try it. It was sweet, and didn’t burn in any unpleasant manner (looking at you, whiskey). 

 

“Whatever.” Tico stole the rum back, an angry blush still on his face. 

 

“Don’t be mad,” Keith said softly. “Sorry you can’t speak Spanish.”

 

“It’s fine,” Tico said. He knocked back the bottle. “Just a language people pick up all the time. I could learn it anytime I wanted to.”

 

“Tell me about your family,” Keith said. “Cuban. You have a twin.”

 

“Yeah, Rosa. Rosalinda. She’s back in LA, doing her beauty school thing or something. We’re the oldest, and we’ve got a  _ lot _ of siblings. Mostly girls. Gina, Lisa, Louisa, Lita—you know how it is.”

 

_ Not really, _ Keith wanted to say, but didn’t. 

 

“We didn’t used to be the oldest,” Tico said, and here his voice got sad. “Me and Rosa. We had an older brother once. Real goofball. Always made Mom and us laugh.”

 

“He died,” Keith guessed. 

 

“Yeah. More like disappeared—none of us ever found his body, and the Garrison never told us nothing.” Tico took a long sip of the rum. “I like to pretend he died like some kind of desperado you see on TV. Like he died being gallant, all Lone Ranger-type. Probably overdosed and floated down to Mexico.”

 

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Keith said. “My parents are dead. I… I get it.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Tico said. He laughed softly, with no mirth behind it. “Man, we got some pretty fucked up lives.”

 

“No kidding,” Keith said, as the last bits of twilight bled from the earth. “My maw died when I was four.” He didn’t know why he volunteered the information so readily. Maybe, in the dark, history wanted to be spoken out loud. Maybe that’s why the natives that used to cherish this land thrived so long on oral stories alone. Europe had their printing presses and their Gutenbergs, and the people down here had their memories and their dark desert nights. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Tico said. He passed Keith the rum. “You need this more than I do, Jack.”

 

They sat out there for a long time, enough for the stars to come out. The rum had softened the earth—so much so that the definitely dead bodies were romantic, somehow. Tico finished two cigs and had started on his third when the mood of the night changed. It was resolved now, and sad. Or maybe it was just Tico that had shifted.

 

“You should go, Jack,” Tico said. 

 

“Yeah.”

 

“It’s not safe here anymore. I’ve… I’ve never seen so many dead bodies before.”

 

“I have,” Keith said, “in my dreams.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

New drinking game: take a shot every time someone apologizes for something they can’t control and never would be able to. Soften up the earth until it was only blurry lines of cobalt blue with space static all in the way. 

 

Keith heaved his beaten body up. He had forgotten his injuries, but it would seem his injuries had not forgotten him. “You’re not gonna ask what happens in my dreams?”

 

“You’re not going to ask me the name of my dead brother?” Tico watched with unimpressed eyebrows as Keith patted the dirt off his ass.

 

“Huh.”

 

“Lance,” Tico said, not without some desperation. 

 

“Lance,” Keith repeated. “That’s some sort of weapon, ain’t it?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“People with weapon names ain’t easy diers,” Keith mused. He walked out into the middle of the dead bodies to look at the sliver of moon out on the edge of town. “Lance. Flint. Helmut, though that’s a stupid name. People named Molly, neither. Most ‘M’ names ‘cept Madison and Madeleine. Like Maude or Maxine. Maureen. People belonging to the Winchesters, like on that show. What’cha call it. Superlative.”

 

“Supernatural.”

 

“Yeah. Those guys. Lance Winchester would be unkillable. Your last name—?”

 

“Means towers.”

 

“Oh. Never mind, then. But Lance—good name for drugs, less so for dying.”

 

Tico sighed. His cigarette smoke caught the neon lights in the window of the bar. “I don’t want false hope, Jack.”

 

Keith shrugged. “Most people don’t. I get it, I get it—I’m going.” He stuck his hands up for surrender and wandered out among the dead bodies. There would be home in one direction or the other. 

 

He stopped looking for home when he felt Tico stand up. It was a fool’s errand, anyway. He didn’t think he’d ever had a real home. 

 

“You’re drunk,” Tico said sadly, laying a hand on Keith’s shoulder. 

 

Keith didn’t know whether to agree or not. He didn’t think he was drunk off a few sips of rum and a nursed glass of Modelo Especial. Couldn’t deny the softness of the earth, though. 

 

“I ain’t,” he decided. “Few more cups of that rum and I will be, though. Aw, don’t look at me like that,” he said to Tico’s troubled expression. 

 

“I ain’t looking at you,” Tico said, and sniffed. It was true. He was mostly looking to the right of Keith’s belly button. 

 

“You should,” Keith muttered, without thinking of the consequences. Tico’s eyes were dewy and trembling, genuinely vulnerable in the way the town’s cabaret singer only pretended to be. 

 

The earth was silent, save a muted song from the radio in the bar, their soft breathing, and the night wind. They were both close to drunk, Keith more so than Tico. 

 

He’d taken a fake name when he came down here. Jack Warren: common enough anywhere in the States and her blurry borders. Yeah, Keith was paranoid, ‘cept it ain’t paranoid if they’re actually out to get you. Easier to escape into the Jack Warrens around these parts than live as who he was. 

 

He regretted the paranoia sometimes, though, like now. Keith would have preferred Tico whisper his real name before they kissed. 

 

Keith let out a soft little ‘ah’, as if he had figured something out. Wasn’t sure what it was that he had sorted. He’d know when he remembered the revelation. 

 

* * *

 

Keith left the bar, and Tico, behind indefinitely, and went to where he always knew he had to go eventually. It wouldn’t be right to leave the place to all the dust and sand and time that gathered up around these parts.

 

_ “Oh, we can be heroes… just for one day….” _

 

Keith watched the starry desert sky spin and hurtle through time. The fuzzy radio’s bunny ears behind him swayed softly in the breeze. 

 

Keith sang along. “I, I will be king… and you, you will be queen…. And nothing will tear us away… oh, we can be heroes… just for one day. We can be us… just for one day.” 

 

The night and the world sang with David Bowie and Keith, as the night and the world were wont to do. Keith buried his head in his hands to block out the stares of the stars. They didn’t want to see him cry to David Bowie’s talk of  _ just for one day.  _ He wished he was brave enough to be a hero. He wished he was brave enough to be himself, the way David Bowie was brave. 

 

He was alone out here; just him and his radio. He forgot who he was with the AA-battery songs, remembered himself with the stars. His name blurred in and out of focus, turning into  _ Ziggy Stardust, _ or the  _ Studio Killers, _ or the boy the boys sang about, and the girl the girls sang about, and the loneliness the country channel sang about, and the carefree summer the pop channel sang about. 

 

He danced sometimes, careful to not step on the imported dirt that grew scant vegetables in the corner behind his house. It wasn’t anything good, he didn’t think, just long limbs and shaggy hair in his eyes and jumping all over the place with the bursts of energy that came out of nowhere. Still, it was fun, and that was what mattered, right? Every time, without fail, he would collapse on his couch that was sometimes his bed, the biggest grin on his face. 

 

He sang to his plants and the chicken whose name changed most days but was most often Jolene, for the song that came on the radio once; he’d read somewhere that plants grow better when they were loved. The same could be applied to chickens, probably. Jolene-Delilah-Caroline-Sharona-Proud Mary-Ms Jackson seemed to like it. She squawked and ruffled her feathers whenever Keith danced at her, cooing, pushing his ugly smile into his face. 

 

His little house out in the middle of nowhere was where he always went when there was trouble on the horizon. It was the last refuge, the pit stop at the end of the universe. There was nothing but sky and sand and a world waiting to hear him sing.

 

Days flowed like water here. When he wasn’t weeding (which was never), he read his collection of books—everything from  _ Pride and Prejudice  _ and  _ Jane Eyre _ to  _ Harry Potter  _ and  _ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. _ The pages were almost Bible-thin, worn from days and years of touching and desert sunlight. He knew the endings. Sometimes the journey was more important.

 

About a mile away, there was this abandoned mission, the kind where old Spanish priests held mass for natives and ranchers and the odd cattle rustler here and there. It wasn’t anything, not like La Purisima and the one with the swallows out in the desert. He doubted it had been occupied for long after it had been built. It didn’t have the old breathing that echoed through the hallway and made the butterflies in his stomach invite an electrician to wire his insides. Still, the well they had in their courtyard wasn’t dry yet (a rarity). You learn to take things as they are out here. 

 

You learn to take things as they _ aren’t,  _ too. You learn to understand what people mean when they say “it could be worse” because, really, it’s pretty much the worst out here. You learn to let go—opportunities don’t come knocking when you don’t have an address. 

 

He had to learn to let go of people, too, from the lady down at the CVS with the sunset pink fingernails to childhood friends he thought he’d forgotten a long time ago, when opportunity never came knocking even when he  _ did _ have an address. 

 

Shiro came to the forefront of his mind more than once in this self-imposed solitary non-confinement. He was in the Bible-thin pages of the books crowding the bookshelf, every gallant and loyal hero, flawless to a fault. Born commanders fell to their knees if he asked them to, because he’d ask nicely, and for a reason. 

 

Shiro was someone to forget. He’d gotten into the Garrison, and three or four years later Keith hadn’t, so it wasn’t important anymore. 

 

There were different realities out there, Keith thought, in which he  _ had _ been accepted into the Galaxy Garrison, or he  _ had  _ been raised by at least one set of kind parents, or he  _ had _ said yes to that girl online when she said they should die together; since he didn’t have internet out here, he supposed that didn’t matter anymore either. Or all those dimensions and branched out realities and worlds only cared about the big stuff, and if Keith was anything, then he wasn’t a very important anything. 

 

* * *

 

He was out back when they rolled up, letting his plants and his chicken listen to the radio, which is probably why he didn’t hear them. He did see them, though, with their black coats and blacker car and blackest eyes. Keith straightened after turning down his radio, contemplating turning it off to save battery. 

 

They stopped in the shadow of his house. Keith waited for them to say the first thing or make the first move; the one with longer hair cracked her knuckles, and the one with shorter hair stuffed her hands in her pockets. 

 

“Ladies,” Keith said finally, nodding a bit. 

 

_ “Despertó mi interés… Y solo tengo ganas de… Verte otra vez….”  _ the radio said softly, a trumpet wailing its heart out in the background. 

 

“You must be Keith,” the one that had cracked her knuckles said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “My name is Laura Hensly. My partner and I are with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’d like you to answer some questions for us.”

 

“I ain’t Keith,” Keith said. “I’m David Waters.”

 

“David,” the one that had tucked her hands in her pockets said. “I’m Hanna Evansdale. Can you tell us what happened to Keith Kogane?”

 

“I don’t know,” Keith said.

 

Hensly sighed, aggravated, and flipped her hair over her shoulder again. “Did he used to live here? Did he say where he was going?”

 

“I don’t want to have to shout to you,” Keith said, keeping his voice even and respectful. “Why don’t you come over here?”

 

Evansdale smirked slightly. She bobbed on the balls of her feet, her coat disrupting the fine sand that piled up at the corners of Keith’s house. “We can go inside. As much as I enjoy Mexican mariachi, I believe you do not want the radio to hear this conversation.”

 

Wordlessly, Keith bent to turn the radio off. The chicken clucked, settling down on her nest. Keith could tell she was displeased at the lack of music. 

 

He nodded at Hensly and Evansdale as he passed them on the way to the door. They turned in unison to watch him go by; he never saw the back of their heads. 

 

“Come on in,” he said, opening the screen door. “I’d offer you something to drink, but I’m saving water right now.”

 

“Thanks anyway,” Evansdale said. She stopped on the very inside of the threshold, taking in Keith’s open floor plan, which was just his room with the couch and the bookshelves and the dry sink in the corner. “Nice place.”

 

“Please, sit down,” Keith said, motioning to his couch. 

 

“We’re okay standing,” Hensly replied, following her partner into Keith’s room. “This is everything?”

 

Keith shrugged modestly. “It ain’t much, I know, but I ain’t one for worldly possessions.” He crossed his arms against his chest, mostly for protection. “Is this a courtesy visit ‘cause I don’t got an address, or do you have questions?”

 

“We have questions,” Evansdale said, in a way that was reassuring and somehow not pcondescending. “Please. Have a seat.”

 

“I’m good standing,” Keith said, irked at being directed in his own house. There was something about it that irritated him—he was the master of his own domain, and so used to doing what he wanted. He didn’t like the first people stepping over his threshold bossing him around. They didn’t live in this place, they hadn’t fixed the roof a million times after every thrilling sandstorm, hadn’t lugged all that fresh dirt from the closest town and made sure it never dried up in the sun, hadn’t slept on the couch and on the floor and on the rocking chair out on the front porch to watch the stars, hadn’t deliberated between woven blankets seen in a general store window one day, hadn’t fixed up the bike in the shed to make it fly. Hadn’t sang to the stars till their throat was bruised and closed and no amount of water would fix it up again. 

 

“If you’re sure,” Evansdale said, not unkindly. “Mr Waters. How did you come across this place of residency?” 

 

“A guy gave me the key in a bar because I needed a place to stay,” Keith said, considering adding  _ away from people like you two _ at the end but ultimately deciding against it. “Before that, I was just drifting. He never gave me his name or where he was headed.”

 

Evansdale hummed. Hensly fluffed her hair slightly and withdrew a pad of paper from her pocket. “Which bar?” she asked, though she didn’t sound too interested, scribbling down something that Keith was sure was his statement. 

 

“The local one,” Keith said, thinking of Tico’s bar under a cobalt sky. “Run by a man name of Lance. Don’t know his last name.”

 

“Okay,” Hensly said in the neutral tone that meant nothing was okay and they were all going to die and Keith should give them a little more information than that. 

 

“That’s all I can tell you,” Keith said, crossing his arms and shrugging with one fluid movement. “Local bar, strange man, I have a house.”

 

“Do you perhaps think that strange man could have been Keith Kogane?” Evansdale asked. “We have his last place of residency here.”

 

“Maybe,” Keith said, weighing the words Evansdale had said, thinking of his lack of address. “Who told you he lived out here?”

 

“We have records,” Hensly said brusquely. 

 

“I see,” Keith said, though he didn’t, not the whole picture, not quite yet. 

 

“How long have you been here?” Hensly asked, scribbling furiously in her paper pad, glancing up at Keith from her bowed head. 

 

“I don’t know,” Keith said honestly, “time flows like water here. Five days or five months, it’s all the same.”

 

“How can you not know?” Evansdale said, with the incredulity of someone who always had data on their iPhone, who could glance down and know the time in five different capitals with a five hundred dollar watch clasped on their wrist, who had a tear-away cat per day calendar next to their alarm clock, who had a monthly calendar pinned somewhere in the kitchen with fancy red lines crossing off the days. 

 

“I just don’t.”

 

“No calendar? Do you have any electronic devices that can tell the time?” Hensly asked, pausing her writing for a second to interrogate Keith on this new tangent. 

 

“No,” Keith said, thinking of the beginnings of a homemade computer buried underneath a tarp buried underneath a few blankets buried underneath math textbooks that were here before Keith. Maybe they were his dad’s, or his mom’s, though neither of them stuck around long enough to teach him the niche calculus.

 

“Wow,” Evansdale said, breathing the shock. “You’re a rarity in this day and age, Keith.”

 

Time was usually slow here besides, since there weren’t hours, but now it went slower, dust particles dancing in the air with no wind to blow them, only bouncing off atoms like pinball games at a boardwalk. 

 

“I ain’t Keith,” Keith lied. 

 

“Of course,” Evansdale said with a certain amount of haste that said she didn’t believe him. 

 

“Why are you looking for Keith Kogane?” he asked, unconsciously raising his hackles like the alley cats he had always had a certain fondness for. “What did he do?”

 

“Murder,” Hensly said, short like her partner, filled with endless possibilities like the sky. 

 

* * *

 

It had been a trip coming back to the house and its solitary room. The last time he was here, he’d been in the range of four and five, and the space was smaller than he remembered. He almost couldn’t blame his father for running away. He couldn’t imagine raising a kid here. His dad must have gotten cramps from folding his knees up onto the couch to stop the gremlin that was Keith from crawling over his feet. 

 

The house had been half-buried under sand when he first arrived. Those were the hardest days, when he slept out in the open, the stars burning pinpricks in his eyes, the sun waking him with dawn. Keith chose to take that as motivation to work. He’d only taken three days and three nights to clear most of the sand. 

 

Some of the stuff couldn’t be saved, but Keith was surprised at what managed to stick around regardless. Most of the books. The couch, after he’d beaten the crap out of the cushions and polished the wood free of grit. His father’s posters, wrapped in a cardboard tube. Even an old stuffed dinosaur that Keith had named Xegward Destroyer of Earth when he was younger. Sand matted his plushy bits some, but the sand was easily brushed off with Keith’s patience and gentle hand. 

 

Xegward was dedicated a shelf next to the non-perishable canned foods. 

 

A few things he’d had to run to the nearest gas station/general store to get, like clothes and a blanket for cold nights. Other stuff he’d stolen, the scrap metal and old electronic wires the Radio Shack dumped, so he could repair his bike and maybe make a homemade computer. He’d forgotten where the seeds came from. Their benefits had been around forever. So had the chicken. 

 

Sometimes, when he had his back turned, a ghost or two ran around the porch and the backyard and the house. He knew they were real. The chicken got spooked by them, and that was how Keith knew to look to see them fade into the bright sunlight. 

 

Nowadays there were more of them, though at least one had kept him company in his childhood. They were ghosts of bad decisions and failed opportunities, of childhood friends, of an angry parent or ten. They haunted him. He ignored them. They couldn’t help—only harm. 

 

If they weren't figments of his imagination, then maybe they had names to them, Shiro and Dad and Tico and a certain Mrs O’Connor and Mom? Mom? Is that you? 

 

Murder? Keith hadn’t known much about murder. Distantly, he supposed his dad had been murdered, and the people spilling from the door of Tico’s bar definitely hadn’t suffered heart attacks, but…. Think of it this way. You dream about something for years, decades, and it’s no big deal—this shit happens all the time—then you realize, or someone tells you, hey that’s illegal. It’s like dreaming about showing up to school naked and knowing it’s bad but it’s happened for so long that it’s relatively unimportant, and you’re like thirty so it doesn’t even matter, and then you read over the local constitution or the school rules and the dress code jumps out at you and scares you half to death. No. You’re not supposed to come to school naked. 

 

Murder? He’d never murdered anybody, not even in that bar fight where he was the last one standing. He just knew to duck out of the way of two men embraced in a deathly sort of hug. 

 

His dad had been murdered, probably, his body unceremoniously dumped in a dumpster on the limits of Phoenix, Arizona. Keith sort of didn’t care, because he was three hundred miles and four hours from Phoenix, give or take. And it had been a week since the man had left their house, taking their address and his name with him. 

 

Murder? What a foreign concept to Keith, who only really knew the blurry border between countries, the dusty sand and clear nights and roads with no markers, only instinct and a keen sense of direction to guide your way. The interstate barely ducked down into this county, and almost everyone spoke Spanish, unless you were Tico or just too gringo. 

 

Murder? Keith murdered weeds all the time, and Sirius Black and all them wizard folks; off the pages of a book and out from under the sun’s blaring light staved off by a nice hat, murder ain’t real, and Keith ain’t got nothing to do with it. 

 

That’s what he was thinking when Hensly and Evansdale came back, at any rate, if it helped his case any. They rolled up in their black car and Keith knew to expect them this time, since he wasn’t one for surprises. Rather be on edge than taken by surprise. This was the paranoia talking. 

 

They had their regular neutral expressions on like before, their black eyes squinting in the shade they so desperately seeked, still wearing their black coats. Nothing about them had changed, and Keith was struck by the thought that nothing about them ever would. 

 

“Hello, David,” Evansdale said. “Good to see you up and about.”

 

“Agent Evansdale,” Keith said, nodding his head respectfully. “Agent Hensly.”

 

“You seem to have us at a disadvantage,” Hensly said, flat and robotic, but that hadn’t changed from last time either, so Keith didn't worry about it. “Remind me of your last name?”

 

“Waters. You ladies want to come inside? Take off your coats? It’s mighty hot out here.”

 

“I like my coat, thanks, but we’ll gladly take you up on the going inside part,” Evansdale said. Keith led them inside, noticing Evansdale’s strict march step and Hensly’s uneven gait—maybe from an aching leg, or just casualness, the sort that defied authority. 

 

“So, you told us the local bar was run by a man named Lance,” Hensly started, facing Keith. They had positioned Keith between them and the door; probably because they didn’t care if he left in a hurry. They’d be able to chase after him in their shiny black car. They probably didn’t know about Keith’s hovercraft. 

 

“The thing is, we can’t seem to find a bar run by a man named Lance anywhere near here, not in living memory,” Hensly continued. “One regular at one of these fancy uptown bars, a kid at a school nearby for those people that want to go to space—”

 

She must have missed Keith’s wince, because she kept going, but Evansdale noticed. He got the feeling she noticed a lot more than other people. 

 

“—but no Lance the bartender or barkeep or bouncer or chef or owner or delivery man or even janitor,” Hensly finished. “And that Lance, space school Lance, died. In an accident.”

 

“Must have been a far away bar,” Keith said. 

 

“It couldn't have been too far. We looked at all of them in a thirty mile radius.” 

 

“Maybe it closed,” Keith said, though he was fishing for excuses at this point. 

 

“Or maybe you’re lying,” Evansdale said. “You winced when we brought up the space school. Why?”

 

Keith opened his mouth a second before letting the truth fall out. “I applied for school there but wasn’t accepted. It’s a sore subject. As you might be able to tell, I never got a college education or training of any kind for anything.”

 

“We’re sorry,” Hensly said. She traded glances with her partner. Keith believed it was the first time they had stopped looking at him. “We’ll be back soon to give you updates.”

 

“I’ll be waiting patiently,” Keith said. He stepped aside and gestured at the door, doing a sort of half bow with elegantly curling wrists and his forearm on his stomach. When he looked back up, they were gone, their black car not exactly squealing away but throwing up dust as it peeled out of the house’s general vicinity. 

 

Keith watched them disappear on the horizon. It took a while. 

 

* * *

 

_ “No llores—no llores—no llores—no llores—no llores—no llores—no llores—no llores—” _

 

_ “Si vas a entregar el alma… Hazlo libre de temores… Si del amor mucho se aprende… Se aprende más de los errores, ay...” _

 

The radio was playing when they returned again. Keith began to notice a pattern. Every other time they came the music was blasting; hopefully this would be the last time, and he wouldn’t have to worry about patterns or no patterns or anything. The music crescendoed, guitar wailing so hard that the strings must have been about to snap. Gloria Estefan let out an anguished  _ “Ay…” _ and Keith turned the radio off. 

 

“Fancy seeing you here again so soon,” Keith said, knowing by now to say the first words. He didn’t invite them in this time, preferring to hold court on his porch, gently rocking on his chair,  _ A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy  _ folded on his lap. 

 

Hensly sighed and unbuttoned her coat. Keith watched as it fell to the ground, sand instantly covering the woolen outside and silky interior. She had an okay figure, all flat and sharp, though Keith wasn’t too interested. Her hair was up in a ponytail this time. 

 

“Keith Kogane, you are under arrest for the murder of Rafael Rivera,” she said as she walked up the steps to where Keith sat. 

 

“I ain’t Keith,” Keith said, rising from his chair to meet her.  

 

Evansdale coughed slightly, still next to the car, meaning to grab attention. “We went to the Galaxy Garrison to see who had been accepted and rejected. No David Waters on either list. There  _ was _ a Keith Kogane on the rejected list.” Keith’s stare pinned Evansdale and her damning words to the dirt in front of his porch. “You were rejected from the Garrison, and you live in Keith Kogane’s house. We are less stupid than you seem to think we are, Mr Kogane.”

 

“You have the right to remain silent,” Hensly said. 

 

“How did Rivera get murdered?” Keith bit out. “How did Kogane do this supposed crime?”

 

“You ambushed him outside the local Walgreens at nine forty-five on Monday, July 9, beating his head in with either a crowbar or a baseball bat, stole his money, and went to buy yourself a drink.” 

 

“I’ve been out here for months,” Keith argued. “And I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in as long.”

 

“Walgreens does employ security footage,” Evansdale said. If Keith wasn’t wrong, he detected sarcasm in her voice. 

 

“I haven’t touched a baseball bat in my life.”

 

Evansdale sighed and disappeared around the back of their glossy black car. Keith glanced at Hensly, who stood off to the side, purposely not obstructing Keith’s view of the car. She said nothing, gave no explanation, only stared at Keith with squinted eyes. This close, Keith noticed they were green instead of the shaded black he had previously thought. 

 

A small poem came to mind, arbitrarily, from his childhood; he’d asked his teacher why it didn’t have purple eyes in it, and she told him his eyes were gray, and no one had purple eyes. 

 

_ Brown eyes belong to the Queen of the Heavens, _

_ Blue eyes to fairies and angels on high, _

_ Gray eyes to storm clouds and raging sea levels, _

_ But green eyes are victors and tricksters who lie. _

 

Evansdale walked back into view, having shed her coat the same as Hensly. They wore identical white blouses and black jeans. A belt with a golden clasp held it together. In her hands, Evansdale held a crowbar. 

 

“Do I need to spell this out for you?” Evansdale asked, tossing the crowbar to Hensly, who caught it with one hand. Keith kept his gaze on the dull metal as Evansdale continued. “You  _ will _ be arrested for murder. We will find this crowbar in your tiny house, still covered in Rivera’s blood, since you have no water to wash it. It was bought by a man named Keith Kogane, who a local bartender admitted to seeing buying all the liquor twenty two dollars and eighty six cents can buy. Rafael Rivera had twenty two dollars and eighty six cents in his wallet when you stole it from him. Congratulations. You are being arrested for murder.”

 

* * *

 

They didn’t put the radio on. Hensly sat next to him while Evansdale drove. He locked stares with her in the rearview mirror. Fair to say he was pissed and confused for being arrested for a crime there was no way he committed, and slowly, he thought  _ why him,  _ and a few other things, too. 

 

“You guys aren’t real cops, are you,” Keith said, and though he meant it as a question, he suspected it was more of a statement at this point. 

 

“No,” Hensly agreed. 

 

“You need someone to pin the crime you committed on.”

 

“Not exactly,” Evansdale said cheerily. “Let’s save the questions until we’ve arrived at our destination, capiche?”

 

Keith craned his neck to see the time. He hadn’t seen a clock in a long time, or glowing things save the sunset, and the neon green  _ 12:24 _ strained his eyes. 

 

“So why set  _ me _ up for murder?” Keith asked in the silence. “There’s a million of me out there.”

 

“You’re more unique than you think, Keith,” Hensly said. If you squint your eyes and shut off the music and tilt your head 22 degrees, you can see a hint of sadness creeping in her words, flitting across her face. 

 

The drive took twenty minutes, during which time no questions were answered and no attempts at small talk were made. Keith wasn’t handcuffed. There was nowhere to go that they wouldn’t find him in five minutes. 

 

Gradually, the town of Bayard overcame them, first grand houses, then real suburbs, then a quaint main street, then the industrial part where the cows went to have the blood drained from their bodies. Keith faintly remembered stealing his chicken from around here. 

 

Evansdale parked their car in front of a warehouse, the sort that was a dime a dozen around these parts. “No questions yet. I’m not the guy you direct them to.”

 

She and Hensly stood by Keith’s sides as he approached, just in case. He took in the warehouse: it had been so long since he’d been in town, and it was alien, strange, too big. Everything was gray—the sky, the buildings, the air. He didn’t like it. It didn’t like him, either. 

 

Evansdale patted him on the shoulder. Keith winced and shrugged her off; he wasn’t used to people touching him, and couldn’t remember the last time someone had. He knew he didn’t like it. She took it stride, though, and said, “Go on.”

 

Keith pushed open the rusty metal door, grateful that it didn’t squeak. He was surprised at the inside—it was well lit, and the floors were clean, and the ceiling was high. There weren’t too many people around, and they were all working on their own thing. 

 

Evansdale and Hensly led him through the warehouse too fast for him to take much of anything, but the computers jumped out at him, mostly because they were a rarity. Even before his time alone, he hadn’t had much use for computers. Some of his foster houses had them. A few of those let him use it. 

 

The computers of the warehouse shone blue light onto the polished floor. Keith could see maps, fuzzy pictures of buildings, star plans… something. Something was going on. 

 

He eventually stopped under a fluorescent light. Somewhere in his gazing around, he had climbed a staircase, and could now look out over the warehouse. It was oddly empty, though it was filled with people arguing and analyzing. It wasn’t empty, per se—something was missing. Then Evansdale nudged his shoulder, and Keith turned to look at where he was taken. 

 

“You must be Keith Kogane,” a new voice said. A woman stood behind a desk overlooking the warehouse floor; she was older, a lot older than Hensly or Evansdale, and held an air of quiet authority. “I’ve heard a lot about you. My name is Esperanza Santana-Vanegas de Torres. Please, have a seat.” She waved at a chair in front of her desk littered with papers and empty coffee mugs. Keith sat. Hensly and Evansdale stood behind him. 

 

“Miss, uh, Santana, I can’t rightly say I know why I’m here,” Keith said. “Miss Evansdale and Miss Hensly say I have been arrested for a murder I did not commit, then they take me here and admit they ain't real cops. I am starting to become very concerned.”

 

Santana had sat down opposite of him and steepled her hands together as Keith talked. “Did you know how close you were to the Galaxy Garrison?”

 

“Far away, I would believe.”

 

“Well, perhaps by car or other land-based vehicle, the time and distance would have been substantial. But as the crow flies? Twenty miles, perhaps less.”

 

Keith blinked, trying to understand. He had heard nothing from anything around him for months, save the calling coyotes and screaming wind. No alarms, no cars, nothing. Keith had struggled through sustained living, stealing the reject scraps from Radio Shack, and there had been a facility pushing the limits of technology and space right in his backyard. It almost didn’t seem fair, for any number of reasons. 

 

“Is that so.”

 

Santana nodded. “In fact, you are located more than halfway from here to the Garrison. I doubt they knew you were there. Your shack blends in with the desert, and you have no electric devices that can be tracked. We almost didn’t know you were there, but our drone spotted you gardening seconds before it was shot out of the sky. It only took a few in-depth searches to find out who you were. You are rather hard to find, Keith.”

 

Santana calling his house a shack rankled him, but suddenly there were more important things on his mind. He could have broken into the Garrison  _ any time he wanted.  _

 

“So?” Keith asked. “What does this have to do with me?”

 

“A couple things,” Santana said, and Keith realized he would never get anything out of her that she didn’t want to tell. “You must be exhausted. I’ll have Laura and Hanna show you where you’ll be staying for now.” She waved a hand, and with a sudden drop in his stomach, Keith realized he had been dismissed. 

 

_ That’s it? _ he wanted to ask.  _ I murder a guy apparently and all I get is a lady telling me I’m exhausted? _

 

“And, Keith,” Santana said, as if she had realized an afterthought. “Don’t leave.”

 

* * *

 

They supplied him with one book,  _ City of Bones, _ which he devoured in an hour and some loose change. He’d never been to New York City, and he didn’t believe that demons were things you could kill, but it was an interesting book anyway. 

 

He was interrupted from his studying of the book’s cover by a discreet cough. Hensly stood a few feet from where he was tucked in a corner way out the way, holding unidentifiable fabric and a small box—the sort what held Dove soap. 

 

“I’m taking you to the gym,” she declared. “You stink. They have showers.”

 

Keith said nothing, but set his book aside and rose to meet Hensly. She was still taller than him. He looked up at her in askance, silently wondering if he could have been as tall if he had had decent food when he was younger. He’d always been shorter than he should have been. Petite, if you were inclined to use the polite terms the fashion world used to sell more expensive clothes.

 

“Well. It’s—my car’s out front. Come on.”

 

“I ain’t allowed.” Keith’s voice was rustier than usual from misuse. He coughed once. 

 

“I’m letting it happen as long as you don’t try to escape. Trust me, it’s for the benefit of the organization that you take a shower.”

 

Hensly wasn’t going to take no for an answer, it would seem. Keith sighed and said, “Lead the way.”

 

In the car, Hensly gave Keith the cloth to hold onto. It turned out to be a shirt and pants, almost leggings, and a change of boxers too, thank God. 

 

She reached up to flick a switch. In the front seat, Keith froze, heart thudding in his chest as Hensly drove them into a secluded alley. The car stopped, and Keith jolted forward slightly, his frozen muscles tensing and untensing, testing their limits. 

 

“Hanna and I do this all the time,” Hensly murmured, as if she were thinking out loud. “Listen. The comms are off, so central won’t know about our little conversation here. I just—you don’t deserve what’s going to happen to you.”

 

She leaned over the wheel and placed her head on the backs of her hands. “Santana is going to kill me.”

 

“Literally?”

 

Hensly laughed without mirth. “No. I don’t want you to be surprised when you find out what you have to do. You know, Keith, everything we did here was for a reason. Your house is  _ so close _ to the fucking Garrison. You’re so disgruntled. Rivera—the Walgreens—this plan is so well thought out that it’s bound to fail.”

 

“Is it.”

 

“Just, just listen to me, Keith. Remember how much you hate the Garrison?”

 

“Couldn't forget if I wanted to.”

 

“What did it do to you?”

 

Keith thought for a second, trying to burn a hole in the dead end alley’s back wall with his mind. “They rejected me. Stole my chance of a future. Stole my chance to find out who my mom was, if I ever had a mom, and wasn’t born out of a rock like my pa said. Stole my best friend, though he was my best friend by default since he was my  _ only _ friend. They do a lot more stealing than people realize.”

 

“Yeah. They stole my future, too, but not like they stole yours,” Hensly said. “Remember that hate. Don’t let it fade over time. People always say that you, you  _ have _ to get rid of negative emotions. That’s not true. People don’t live their lives with only good things. Shit things happen to us, and we’re gonna feel strongly about it. Hanna, her big sister was a technician at the Garrison. She’d kill me if she knew I was telling you this. Her sister… she was working on this big rocket, the sort that kicks you out of orbit. Well, they decided to test the firepower. They didn’t think there was anyone in there, or at least that’s what they told the Evansdales, but I was told they told her once to get out but she was busy doing her job, you know, quality control—like what I used to do—and then they turned on the rocket.”

 

“She died.”

 

“Yeah. They called it a mishap, like it happens on the job all the time. But it doesn’t. Well, at least it shouldn't. What I’m trying to say—all of us, we hate the Garrison. It’s a corrupt institution. You’ll help us take it down.”  Though it should have been a question, the last statement wasn’t. 

 

“I will.”

 

Hensly sighed. “You could have been great, Kogane. We could have been great.”

 

* * *

 

People stopped avoiding him once he took his shower. He didn’t think he'd smelled  _ that _ bad. 

 

A guy with a narrow face that Keith would have thought attractive once upon a time took him out to eat dinner. He tried to get Keith to talk about something, anything at all. Keith thought about Tico. He told the guy he didn’t know anything about current anything. They had pizza. 

 

He was shown a side room in the warehouse with an old couch on one wall. It used to be an employee break room. Keith tried not to think about what must have happened on that couch, just like when he avoided thinking about his parents having sex on the couch in his house. They  _ probably  _ did. And it sucked because there wasn’t room to put even a twin-sized bed in the side closet he had, so he didn't bother bargaining for one down at the general store. 

 

He re-read  _ City of Bones  _ before falling asleep. You never know you’re dreaming until it’s too late. 

 

There were runes inked up and down his arms, patterns that moved when he blinked. Water sliced down his limbs and the broad expanse of his back. It flew off of his hands and into the puddle by his feet. The dull, rainy sound was nice. Too bad it wasn’t rain. 

 

He looked up. Stars were raining down. One touched his cheek—it looked like Hensly when she was sad for him. “Great.”

 

He opened the door to his house. A man stood there, his face blurry. “Son,” the man said.  _ Don’t call me son, I ain’t your family _ , he wanted to say. He didn’t. He didn’t do a lot of things. He blinked, and the man was Hensly and Evansdale, knives standing where their attitudes should have been. Santana sat behind the driver’s wheel in the shiny, black car. 

 

_ Congratulations. You're being arrested for murder.  _ Evansdale swung her crowbar around in lazy circles, her wrist joint cracking unnaturally. Hensly looked at him with sad green eyes. Tico’s eyes were brown. 

 

“I wish you hadn’t had to leave,” Tico said, looking somewhere to the left of his belly button. 

 

“Me neither,” Keith said (finally he had a name). He took a swig of the rum. Lonely siren moans and screaming trumpet played in the background when they kissed. 

 

He woke up. 

 

* * *

 

“I’m sorry,” Hensly whispered. She clasped his shoulder, and though the feeling was tainted, he let it happen. Out of all of the people he knew, she was the last person that had to apologize to him. Shame she had to do it first, before everyone else had a chance. 

 

He faced Santana. He knew what he needed to do, and though he hated it, he wasn't surprised when she told him. He’d had time to come to terms with it. There wasn't any alternative to this situation. He had nowhere to go. He  _ had  _ to do this… this  _ thing.  _ There wasn't anything else to do. 

 

“You are going to kill Rafael Rivera with no other purpose than to steal his wallet,” Santana said suddenly, her words echoing in the warehouse. “You’ll use a crowbar and beat his head in. It will only take one swing. You will take all of the money out of his wallet, then chuck it somewhere random. I will show you where to throw it so we can find it. After you buy your alcohol, you can go back to your shed. Don’t wash the crowbar. We’ll pick you up in the morning to take you somewhere safe.”

 

What Santana wasn't saying was, well, it was a lot. Rivera kept his employee keycard in his wallet. He was security, so he had access to plenty of places, like the student dorms and the high-ranking staff’s offices and computers. His death would put a wrench in security rounds late at night. He wore his and his daughter’s dog tags around his neck. Keith was not allowed to touch them. 

 

It would just be coincidence that he was a Garrison employee and that Keith killed him. Rivera bought himself pocket warmers for the cold desert nights spent on patrol. He bought a couple for the men on his squad, too. His husband would have sole custody of their daughter. 

 

That is how Keith found himself around the corner of the local Walgreen’s, holding his breath and a crowbar. Rivera’s car was right there. He would grab his attention, entice him a little—what’s a little more vice in the desert? The stars won’t care. 

 

That was him. 

 

“Hey,” Keith said, his voice throaty and low. “Handsome.”

 

Rivera perked up. This late, it was just them in the parking lot. “Me?”

 

Keith checked the cams, playing off the head tilt as a coy smile. “Yeah, ’course. Why don’t you come over here?”

 

Suitably entranced, Rivera walked over, stopping in the streetlight’s halo shining on the asphalt. His eyes were dark. Keith took a step forward and ran one hand over the fold of his peacoat. 

 

“You are handsome,” Keith murmured, his hand tightening on the crowbar hidden behind his back. “Would it be so bad?”

 

Rivera breathed out, warm air flowing over Keith’s face. It smelled like the tail end of strawberry vodka. “No. It wouldn't be so bad.”

 

Keith couldn’t look at his eyes. “Good.”

 

Quicker than instinct, before his brain told him no, he took a step back and swung the crowbar around one-handed. Rivera collapsed on the asphalt. Keith looked at his body, then crouched and searched for first a pulse and then his wallet. He found the latter, but not the former.

 

He glanced around, his gaze caught by a staring security camera. He bolted. Rivera’s body stayed where it was, his peacoat miraculously untouched by blood. 

 

Keith walked the warren of alleys a town like Bayard provided. He took out a little less than twenty dollars from Rivera’s wallet. So their information had been wrong. He tossed the rest of the wallet to the side. It wasn’t where Santana said he should drop it off, but it was close enough, and Keith could pretend it was an accident. 

 

Murder?

 

He froze, then shook his head, then kept walking. 

 

The bar he found was a tiny hole in the wall with pictures of naked girls on the wall and thin neon lights covering the window. The bartender wore flannel, a salt and pepper beard, and a mistrustful gaze. The radio was silent, and for a moment Keith feared the bar was closed, and then the bartender slung his cleaning cloth over his shoulder and said, “Anything I can help you with, stranger?”

 

Keith eased into a barstool. “I got eighteen dollars and thirty cents,” he said, “and a hell of a lot of sorrow. How much Modelo Especial can that buy?”

 

Wordlessly, the bartender brought out two beer bottles and filled half a cup with a third one. “Just you and me tonight it seems, stranger. Can’t say I seen you ‘round before.”

 

“Just passing through.”  Keith took a swig of the half-filled cup. “I’ll trade you a bottle of that Modelo for a glass of rum.”

 

“Deal. You got a name?”

 

While Keith was drinking his beer, the bartender swapped a bottle with a tall glass of Captain Morgan. It looked like magic for the split second before Keith realized what had happened. 

 

“Keith,” he said, “Keith Kogane.”

 

“Well, Keith,” the bartender said. “I been on the lookout for a Jack Warren. Friend of mine went looking for him. If you see him, let him know a Tico said that he can go home now.”

 

Keith squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. “I don’t know any Jack Warren, but I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear the message.” He finished his beers and ran a finger around the rim of his glass of rum. 

 

“Shame,” the bartender said. “You look a lot like him. Will I see you again?”

 

Keith took a long, slow drink of the rum. It was sweet, and didn’t burn unpleasantly. “I doubt it.” He looked the bartender in the eye, then tilted his head back and downed the rest of his alcohol. “Why would you want me around?”

 

The bartender looked taken aback, but Keith was already leaving, his stolen money on the counter, a familiar buzz crawling underneath his skin. 

 

He started the walk back to his house. The stars were out in full force, muttering in the sky, gazing down at him. He stumbled more than once in a hole on the side of the road. 

 

The stars were judging him. Keith stopped, the lights of Bayard far behind him, his house even farther ahead of him. He spread his hands. 

 

_ “Why me?”  _ he screamed.  _ “Why me?” _

 

The stars twinkled at him. Keith squinted up at them, words running through his mind, all the things he wanted to ask his parents, everything he wished he could ask Tico. “Why did you leave me? Why do you care about me?” His voice rose to a shout. Keith was reminded of the world at large, and reined himself back in. 

 

In a whisper, he asked, “Why do you hate me?” He knew the stars could hear his words. 

 

What was so important about him? Maybe in some other reality, he was saving the universe. Maybe he was dying a hero’s death. Maybe he was falling in love. 

 

But here, in this dusty, crummy life, he was a nobody with no parents headed nowhere. All the other Keiths were important. This one, the one he was now, was just dirty. 

 

He kept walking, waiting for the stars to answer him. They never did. 

 

It was almost morning when he finally found his house again. Maybe Santana was right. It did kind of look like a shack in the early dawn’s light. The sun hadn't risen yet, and he almost didn't want it to. 

 

Evansdale was waiting for him. Keith realized he was still holding his crowbar. 

 

“So,” she said. She sat on the porch in Keith’s chair, the thick woven blanket covering her legs. “You did it.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

She stood. The blanket fell to the wooden porch. Keith tsked—he’d have to beat the sand out of it later. In her hand was a shiny black thing to match her shiny black car.

 

“Thanks.”  

 

The thing in her hand didn’t really register. It was dark, and the shape of it was dangerous. 

 

Evansdale sighed. The sun spilled over the horizon, red light lighting up the mountains in the distance. She squinted. Keith’s shadow fell on her feet. 

 

“You could have been great,” she said, as if she knew something he didn’t. Behind her, ghosts clustered at the windows and at the edges of the doorframe. She didn’t seem to notice. 

 

The thing—the gun, let’s not pretend—she raised the gun. The hole at the end got bigger and bigger and Keith didn’t even feel the bullet cut through his head and clean out the other side. 

 

A bang sounded through the desert, like a chorus of angels or all the songs in the world, every time someone sang along to the radio, compressed into a single moment in time. 

 

Evansdale sighed again and lowered the hot gun. “I had to do it,” she explained to the dead body. “We didn’t want you to talk, see? 

 

“Why you?” she continued. She knew it was stupid, but Keith deserved an explanation. Maybe he was listening, probably confused, a little disappointed. “Your house is close enough to monitor Garrison activity. It was mostly for your house.” She knocked on the beam supporting the porch roof. “This crummy thing. It doesn’t look like much, but for us, it’s worth a lot. Probably worth a lot for you, too.”

 

Evansdale sighed again. She jumped down from the porch, not bothering to take the stairs. Keith’s body was heavier than it looked, and didn’t cooperate besides. But Evansdale was strong. Sometimes, when they got too caught up in the moment, she would pick up Laura and take her to the nearest horizontal surface. She never even thought twice about it. 

 

She arranged Keith on the rocking chair, brushing the sand off of the blanket as best she could so she could lay it over his lap. She took his hand in her own gloved one, and for just one second, grieved for the man that no one else would. Then she wrapped his fingers around the handle and the trigger. It was clumsy, but it would work. She laid the bloody crowbar under the rocking chair. 

 

There. A suicide. 

 

Evansdale squinted against the sunrise. She didn’t like it—she’d always been susceptible to sunburns, had gotten a real nasty one in high school that gave her permanent freckles on her shoulders. At least Laura liked kissing them. 

 

Keith watched her drive away, her tires dusting up the trunk of the car. The chicken in the back was clucking relentlessly. She must be hungry. 

 

Ghostly fingers switched on the radio. 

 

“I’m so proud of you, son,” a purple woman with yellow eyes said. “I’m sorry. I wish you hadn’t joined us so soon.”

 

Keith leaned his head into her hand. “Hi, Mom.”

 

_ “The last… the last… the last….” _

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

**END**

  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_ HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY  _

_ A  _ _ COMRADE IN ARMS  _

_ KNOWN BUT TO GOD _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Before you say anything, this almost made me cry too. And, yes. He was going to die from the moment this idea sprang, fully formed, into my head. 
> 
> [Bayard is a real town in New Mexico.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard,_New_Mexico) I may have fudged the facts about the town a little, but it is in the name of creative writing. Keith lives in the Chihuahuan desert. I wrote this before season 6 came out, and this is an alternate universe besides, so my idea for Keith’s father’s death may be different than what was intended by the writers of the show. I wrote the poem Keith thinks of myself. Hit me up for the link.
> 
> Modelo Especial is a brand of beer. Captain Morgan is a brand of rum. 
> 
> [Eli,](http://eliaesthetics.tumblr.com/) my artist and one of the mods of this event, says (and I quote) “Ur not afraid of killing off ur favs at all” and “honestly my heart”. They also didn’t finish reading my story until eight days ago. This has been a callout. 
> 
> I finished writing this in January. I don’t know how I still like it. Blessèd be my beta, Shannon, who is being credited right here, right now, for bopping me over the head and doing a stellar job. I don’t have her Tumblr. I am sorry. 
> 
> Written for the [Keith Mini Bang](http://keithminibang.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. [Here is the art. _Love the art._](http://eliaesthetics.tumblr.com/post/175722772385/my-submission-for-the-keithminibang-event-i)


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